Reto Cookbooks - Are You Hungry Tonight?

A couple of weekends ago I was visiting my folks, I had the ultimate lazy Sunday and stayed in my PJs and glutinously watched The Food Network all day, to watch a Nigella Lawson marathon. I am a huge fan of her kitsch wonderfulness and I was in retro overload when she cracked out a recipe from "Elvis' Favourite Recipes, Are You Hungry Tonight?" The recipe she made was a Fried Banana and Peanut Butter Sandwich. I think it possibly had a gajillion calories in it, but it did look super yummy!  

I love this recipe book! The cheesy pictures of Elvis surpass all the cheese that is needed for the recipes in this book. My favourite picture has to be Elvis with his guitar with the lady covered in bananas, you just don't get entertainment like that anymore. The last recipe in the book takes up 9 pages! And if you follow those 9 pages you will create The Royal Wedding Cake, this was the cake that was created for Elvis and Priscilla when they got hitched. This is apparently the exact recipe that their wedding cake was made to, so if you have a spare 20 pounds of flour and 500 hungry mouths to feed you could try to recreate this 6 tiered beast. 

Inside this book there were some random recipe cards. I thought the first one was funny, how to make a 'Layered Fruit Salad', the recipe instructions basically tell you to chop fruit up and layer it, then serve. The Lasagne recipe card is fabulously dated, I especially love the bottle of wine in its veneered cover. 

I can't wait to try out some of these recipes! 

Happy Retro Cooking!
Much Love
Kirst

Coeliac Awareness Week - Yummy Gluten Free Garlic Bread.

It is Coeliac Awareness Week this week, so I thought I would share my super easy gluten free garlic bread recipe. Warm, soft and buttery on the inside with a slight crunch on the outside. I must admit I used to be very lazy and just buy garlic bread and put it in the oven to heat it up. When I found out I was gluten intolerant I couldn't do that anymore. So I had to take matters into my own hands and make my own! I don't make my own bread, I have tried a couple times and once the 'bread' is cooled I could defend my home against an intruder with it, it is that hard and dense. I have found that gluten free ciabatta or regular gluten free rolls work brilliantly though. So this is how I make my garlic butter. 

I don't ever really measure this recipe because it is so easy to make yummy. This is what you need:

1 knob of butter
6-7 cloves of garlic (I like my garlic butter strong, reduce this amount if you want)
3-4 tablespoons of olive oil
1/4 teaspoon of dried parsley
1/4 teaspoon of dried tarragon

Put the butter in a cup in a bowl of hot water (so the butter starts to melt). Peel the garlic cloves and grind them into a smooth paste in a pestle and mortar, you could just chop the cloves up small if you don't have a pestle and mortar. Put the garlic paste in with the butter and add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Stir this until the butter has nearly melted and add the dried parsley and tarragon. Then add the rest of the olive oil. You want the garlic butter thick but pourable. All you need to do now is to slice into some rolls, you want to leave one edge uncut so the slices don't fall apart and spoon the garlic butter down every cut you have made. Put them on a baking tray in an oven heated to 200 degrees C for about 5 minutes, until the crust of the bread has just started to toast. 

Hope you enjoy <3

Much Love

xkx